


weasel stomping day

by uptownskunk



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 17:53:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18036095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptownskunk/pseuds/uptownskunk
Summary: Peter spends his life looking forward to the day his timer will run out and he’ll finally meet his soulmate until it actually happens and his soulmate turns out to be a shady bar owner who doesn’t really want anything to do with Peter at all.





	weasel stomping day

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t...actually know where the hell this came from but I started seriously shipping this cracky mess halfway through writing it and I need a guy named Gunner to hit me in the face to snap me out of it. Yeesh.
> 
> The Weasel in this fic is taken from the Deadpool movies and the Peter is a mishmash of comics and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man. Peter is seventeen in this and Weasel is thirty-eight, but there’s no sexual contact or anything like that between them so the underage warning didn’t apply; still, be cautious reading if the idea of a minor and an adult being soulmates squicks you out. 
> 
> Fic title from the Weird Al song of the same name because irony, I guess.

It’s frigid on the rooftop tonight but Peter refuses to toss in the towel and end his patrol just yet.

On a normal night, he’d probably be headed home by now, eager to shed off his suit and get himself tucked and warm into his bed, but this isn’t a normal night.

This is the night the counter on his wrist has been counting down to since he was born.

This is the night Peter will meet his soulmate.

Peter is reasonably antsy over it – antsy to the point of full blown _anxious_ which is why he’s parked on the roof of a moderately tall building overlooking a few other buildings and what he’s pretty sure is either a bar or the most rundown nunnery he’s ever seen in his _life_.

None of the people going into the place look quite like nuns to Peter, but he’s not one to judge if whoever the _Sister Margaret_ named on the plaque outside the place isn’t.

Besides, Peter has bigger things to worry about. Things that will be happening in – he pulls up his sleeve long enough to check – oh, twenty minutes.

Did Peter mention he’s anxious? Because _seriously_.

He knew he’d needed to leave the house because he was hardly going to meet his soulmate inside his bedroom but after that, Peter had...stalled. He’s thought about how he’d eventually meet his soulmate plenty over the years – obsessed over it, if he’s being honest. He’d done the math early on and always knew he’d be meeting his soulmate incredibly _late_ one night in March.

Before he’d been bitten by a radioactive spider, Peter always assumed that maybe he’d sneak out to go to a party or he’d be traveling back from a field trip or something and meet them that way. _After_ Peter became Spider-Man, he became convinced he’d meet his soulmate while out on patrol.

The problem is that as much as Peter knows the _when_ for sure and can speculate on the how, there’s absolutely nothing about a person’s clock that lets them know _where_ they’ll meet their soulmate. Peter couldn’t predict that even if he lived on a tiny, deserted island and he can’t predict it now while he’s in New York any easier.

So Peter had swung around a few buildings, he’d loitered on a few corners obsessively checking his clock, and eventually he’d come to this rooftop which has absolutely nothing special about it to separate it from any of the thousands of other rooftops in the city except that it’s on _this_ one that Peter’s performance anxiety had kicked in and made him have to sit down because he’s pretty sure with the way his legs were shaking, he’d be collapsing if he didn’t.

The thing is, Peter doesn’t think he’s a romantic or anything, he doesn’t really believe in love at first sight, but there’s still a part of him that hopes that meeting his soulmate will be the one bright, shining moment in his life that will be the start of better things to come. That after losing his parents and then Uncle Ben and then with all the trials that he’s been through with being Spider-Man, that _this_ will be something...good.

Uncomplicated.

People met their soulmates and fell in love every day and Peter, who might be _something_ of a romantic, really wants to be one of those people.

He’s spent his entire life imagining that he _will_ be.

He is, however, totally distracted from his imagination tonight by the sound of scuffling coming from the alley behind the maybe-a-nunnery-slash-probably-a-bar.

Peter tilts his head, strains his ears, and at the sound of a punch being thrown, immediately goes into action. He swings down just in time to see one guy pressed with his back against the wall and a much bigger guy leaning over him menacingly, his hand raised threateningly in the air.

“---gives you the right to give _my_ jobs away, Weasel,” the bigger guy is snarling.

“Oh, gee, I don’t know, Gunner,” the smaller guy, Weasel apparently – and what a strange name _that_ is, Peter thinks – says back, his tone more mocking than Peter thinks is great for his continued health considering his current position. “Maybe it’s because it’s _my place_ and it’s totally within my rights to give jobs to people who can actually get them done on time? You’re lucky I even let you in the door anymore after you fucked me over with the last one you didn’t finish.”

Gunner’s raised hand twitches, obviously about to hit Weasel again, but Peter’s got his web wrapped around it before it can make contact and in the next second Peter is using the line of webbing to drag Gunner _away_ from Weasel in a strong jerk that sends him flying in Peter’s direction until he lands in a heap of tangled limbs on the ground.

“Hi there,” Peter says brightly when Gunner looks up, letting himself feel a little bit _proud_ at how the sight of Spider-Man has such a big guy paling so quickly. “I heard you’re having some trouble holding a job, Gunner. Wanna talk it out?”

Judging by the way Gunner scrambles up and immediately runs away, Peter’s going to guess the answer to that is _no_.

Oh well, Gunner’s loss.

Peter walks over to Weasel who’s moved away from the wall to stand in the mouth of the alley and Peter has to force himself not to make a quip about how the guy looks more like a squirrel than a weasel to his face once he gets a good look at him because Peter would like to believe he’s _not_ a total dick, thanks.

“Are you okay?” he asks instead, eyeing Weasel’s face for any damage beyond one bruised cheekbone and finding none. “That guy looked like he had big fists.”

“More like a big mouth,” Weasel scoffs, eyeing Peter back. He clears his throat. “This uh – this isn’t really your usual area, is it, Spider-Man? There’s not like, anything going on, is there? Any reason you’re here?”

Weasel sounds nervous but Peter doesn’t spare much time to dwell on it because he remembers that _yes_ , there’s a reason he’s here – that reason being the timer still counting down on his wrist. _Shit_.

“Uh, no, I was just – just passing through,” Peter says awkwardly, because it’s not really a lie but he’s not about to tell a stranger that he’s going to meet his soulmate tonight. “I’m sure you have to get back to – it’s a bar, right? Not a nunnery?”

Weasel laughs harshly but nods. “Yeah, it’s a bar. Not exactly a religious crowd in there, so,” he gestures at the back door, “I should get back in.”

He turns to go but pauses with his hand on the door, coughing. “Hey, man, thanks for the help. Didn’t need it, of course, but uh – thanks.”

And then Weasel is pulling the door open and going through, letting it fall shut behind him and leaving Peter alone in the alley.

Peter gives himself exactly five seconds to make sure Weasel isn’t going to come back out for some reason before he’s pushing up his sleeve to look at his timer.

He’s expecting to have five minutes left, ten tops – how long had he spent dealing with Gunner, talking with Weasel? shit, Peter doesn’t know – but to Peter’s total shock, his timer doesn’t read either of those.

On his wrist, in a perfectly even row is the same number repeating across.

Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero.

Timer empty.

Countdown complete.

Peter had already met his soulmate.

 

o-------o

 

Peter goes back to the bar the next night.

Actually, more accurately, Peter goes back to the _rooftop_ the next night and waits there with no one but his badly fraying nerves for company while he watches the bar for hours upon hours waiting until people finally start leaving, wondering if maybe he should’ve done this the night before immediately after seeing his empty timer instead of waiting but Peter had been so _stunned_ then he couldn’t deal with it, he could barely make it home.

But Peter is here now and now Peter waits until he’s reasonably sure the bar is closed and no one but Weasel is still there, and then he swings himself off the roof to land on quiet feet right at the bar door.

He stands there for a long, long time just trying to steady his breath.

This is not how he imagined meeting his soulmate would go.

 _Weasel_ isn’t what he imagined.

But Weasel is Peter’s soulmate – at least, Peter hopes he is. Out of the two options, Gunner and Weasel, Weasel is clearly the better one for whatever that’s worth, for as unexpected as he is as a soulmate, but Peter – Peter has been dealing with unexpected things happening to him for his whole life, for better or worse. Mostly for worse, yeah, but there’s every chance that this will turn out for the better.

Peter wraps himself up in that hope, lets himself believe in it, and pushes open the bar door to go inside.

A quick glance around shows it’s empty inside except for Weasel who stands with his back to Peter at the bar where a giant board titled _Sister Margaret’s Dead Pool_ with a list of names and numbers on it hangs in front of him.

Peter doesn’t really have time to wonder about it – betting? football league? – before Weasel is calling out without looking, “Hey, asshole! Closing time means closed, get out, fuck off, et cetera. Come back tomorrow if you want a drink.”

“Um,” Peter speaks up and Weasel must recognize his voice because he’s turning around immediately in alarm. “Yeah, I’m uh – I’m not here for a drink.”

Weasel stares at him incredulously for such a long, god-awful few seconds that Peter’s surprised he doesn’t melt into a red and blue puddle on the floor from the sheer _what the fuck_ power of the look being leveled at him right now.

The moment breaks when Weasel lets out a heavy sigh and then laughs, the sound a lot less humored and a lot more hysterical to Peter’s ears.

“Nope!” Weasel says, shaking his head. “I’m not doing this.”

“Um--” Peter starts, taking a step forward.

“Oh, no – no, no, no! You don’t take another _step_ in here, buddy!” Weasel holds out a hand, palm facing forward in the universal gesture of _stop_ and Peter does – stop, that is. Right there in his tracks. “I am not doing this, we---” he gestures frantically with the same hand at the space between he and Peter, “--are not doing this.”

“I’m going to hazard a guess that _this_ would be the thing where we’re soulmates?” Peter ventures and he’s pretty sure now – already sending his blessings off to the universe for not giving him _Gunner_ \-- but he still has to know, has to be sure. He’s been thinking about meeting his soulmate for so long and to finally have it _happen_ is a once in a lifetime event. Maybe it’s not going how Peter always imagined it would, but – “I mean, your timer hit zero the other night, too, right? It wasn’t just---”

Weasel lets out a noise that sounds like, well, a weasel. A weasel that’s very angry or very dying or that very suddenly developed a severe case of asthma that it’s now _dying_ from.

“Yes, _Spider-Man_ ,” Weasel rolls his eyes, “That’s the thing we’re not doing, the thing where I have somehow fucked up so badly in the last thirty-eight years of my life that karma has decided to finally fuck my ass by giving me a superhero as a soulmate. That? Is not happening here. I’ll take an actual dick up my ass first.”

There is...so, so much to unpack in that, but somehow what Peter’s brain sticks on is--

“You’re thirty-eight?”

The look Weasel gives him is unimpressed and very quickly sliding into horrified. “Oh Jesus fuck, how old are _you_?”

The silence in the few seconds it takes Peter to think about it, to think about whether he should lie or not, is apparently pretty damning because Weasel groans loudly and immediately grabs a bottle of vodka off the bar behind him to pour himself a drink.

Which he downs in one go, coughing a little bit after.

“Karma is not just fucking my ass, she’s doing it barebacked and lubeless,” he rasps out. “A regular superhero isn’t bad enough, no, I get a twelve year old junior hero. _Fuck_.”

“I’m seventeen,” Peter can’t help but saying, more defensively than he should.

Weasel shoots him another unimpressed look.

Peter’s self-esteem has never been great but he’s pretty sure having his _soulmate_ so clearly thinking he’s not hot shit when he’s in full Spider-Man regalia – _Spider-Man_ who is obviously much more impressive than Peter Parker would be, Peter’s sure, to literally _anyone_ – is taking him to new lows in record time.

Peter spares a second to wonder if maybe Weasel _would_ be more impressed with Peter Parker but if a seventeen year old superhero is unimpressive then a seventeen year old, _period_ , surely can’t be that much better to him.

“Look,” Peter tries again, taking a tentative step forward and then another when Weasel doesn’t yell for him to stop again. “I get that I’m, uh, probably not who you imagined your soulmate would be, okay? You’re---not exactly who I imagined, either. But I mean, you only get one soulmate in your lifetime, right? Can’t we just, I don’t know, try to get to know each other? Be friends, at least?”

Peter stops when he finally gets to the counter, trying both not to crowd into Weasel’s space and to ignore the fact that there’s something sticky on the surface of the bar that’s currently clinging to his suit-covered fingertips where he’s resting them on the edge.

Gross.

But Weasel looks like he’s thinking about, so Peter focuses on that. He focuses on it and hopes and---

“No,” Weasel says, already pouring himself another drink, and Peter deflates where he stands.

Weasel takes a gulp of vodka, hissing through his teeth after swallowing, and then eyes Peter like he’s infectious.

When Peter just stands there, silent and probably looking as pathetic as a kicked dog, Weasel sighs and runs a frustrated hand across his face. “Kid, it’s nothing personal, alright? You could have been a six foot tall Norwegian supermodel with great tits and a legal ID that let you actually buy drinks at this bar and the answer would be the same. I might have taken a Norwegian supermodel upstairs for like, the three and half minutes it would take for me to get my dick out and use it, but I’m not the kind of guy who’s looking to _settle down_ or the kind that anyone with _any_ sense would want to settle down with.”

Peter has no clue how something can come across as both skeevey and reassuring at the same time.

It also sounds kinda like bullshit.

“You’re saying this is for my own good?”

Weasel snorts at that like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “Oh, no. The last thing I need is Spider-Man and whatever merry band of do-gooders you roll with hanging around this place with the kind of clients I have. No, this is for _my_ own good. I’m just saying you shouldn’t feel like Romeo getting told to choke on his own dick by Juliet in a text over it is all.”

“You don’t strike me as much of a Juliet,” Peter says because – well, what else is there to say?

Weasel flashes him a grin, more a quick baring of teeth than anything. “And I’m guessing underneath all that spandex, you’re _exactly_ the kind of guy who’d get off on being called Romeo.”

Peter has no clue what _that_ means but he knows it’s an insult and it’s probably his cue to just...get the hell out of here and throw seventeen years of waiting to meet his soulmate in the trash on the way out.

Alright, then.

“Well, I guess I’ll just,” Peter lifts a hand from the sticky counter to gesture vaguely at the door behind him. “Yeah.”

Weasel looks inordinately pleased at that and it really shouldn’t kick Peter in the ribs as much as it does, but he can’t help it.

It’s not even _Weasel_ specifically that makes it hurt because god knows he’s nowhere near Peter’s type, if Peter even _has_ a type, it’s just – soulmates are supposed to be like...magical, aren’t they? Meeting your soulmate is supposed to be this amazing, life defining, _magical_ moment and what Peter’s getting is not magical in any sense of the word unless the magic being used on his life is a _curse_ which – going by everything else that’s happened in his life up to now – is probably exactly what’s happening.

Somehow, though, he’d thought that maybe – just maybe – his soulmate wouldn’t be on the list of shitty things that have happened to him and since he’s been proven abundantly wrong, he’s pretty sure he has the right to feel ripped off here, okay?

But he’s leaving.

He’s unsticking his other hand from the filthy bar counter, he’s turning around and heading to the door, he’s –

Stopping before he gets there to turn around again.

“Hey, uh, one question – what did you mean when you said you didn’t need me hanging around this place?”

The way Weasel instantly freezes would be comical, maybe, in any other circumstances but Peter is _so_ past the point of feeling like laughing after this day.

“Um,” Weasel laughs, bringing a hand up to run nervously through his hair. “I just – I meant, it wouldn’t be okay for a seventeen year old to be at a bar all the time, you know? Because. It’s illegal. And I very much care about not breaking the law.”

Peter’s pretty sure he counted like, five lies in there. Minimum.

Weasel, apparently, _isn’t_ that great of a liar. It’s probably the one thing Peter has found that he has in common with his soulmate so far and he can’t image what fate or biology or _whatever_ came up with soulmates was thinking if that’s the _only_ thing they have in common.

“Yeah, but see---” Peter takes a step forward and he wouldn’t have missed the way Weasel’s eyes darted under the bar even if his spidey sense didn’t tingle a little at it. He watches Weasel carefully, cautious. “You said you didn’t need _Spider-Man_ or any other heroes hanging around here because of your _clients_. What kind of bartender calls his customers clients?”

When Weasel’s eyes drop down under the bar again and stay there this time, Peter tries to hold himself steady and calm while internally his head is screaming in a litany that sounds a lot like _fuck fuck fuck_ repeated over and over again.

Getting rejected by your soulmate? Okay, bad luck. It happens. Peter isn’t alone in that.

Having your soulmate pull what Peter suspects Weasel has under the bar and is thinking of pulling on _him_ on you and having to haul them to _jail_ because you’re a superhero and they’re a _criminal_ – fuck, Weasel is definitely a criminal, Peter feels so stupid for not _realizing –_ that isn’t just bad luck, that’s life itself having a vendetta against Peter _personally_.

So Peter is, rather understandably, _relieved_ when Weasel finally drags his eyes up from what Peter’s sure is the gun he keeps under the bar and his hands go to grab the – nearing empty – bottle of vodka to pour himself another drink.

“You know what?” Weasel says, raising his full glass to Peter. “I change my mind. Fuck it, we’re doing this. Let’s be friends.”

Peter’s pretty sure his brain short-circuits a little from that one-eighty.

“I’m sorry – _what_?”

“You want to do the whole getting to know each other thing where we share our childhood traumas and bond over stupid shit like what episodes of the Twilight Zone we like, hoping it’ll eventually make us like each other enough to want to rub our dicks together?” Weasel drains the vodka and slams the glass down on the bar when he’s done. “Okay, cool, I can close my eyes and pretend your name is Ingrid – but I want something in return.”

Peter really regrets not leaving right now.

He regrets the curious step he takes forward even more.

“And that would be...what, exactly?” he asks, wary.

Weasel offers a sly smile. “I want you to never come near my bar again.”

“But--”

“Not while it’s open, I mean,” Weasel elaborates, scoffing. “This being friends bullshit happens before opening or after closing only _._ I don’t want to see you anywhere near this place anytime I’ve got _customers_ here. I don’t care if you’re in your jammies like your are now or in whatever it is you wear when you’re out of them, you got it?”

“You’re--” Peter laughs in disbelief. “You’re seriously _blackmailing_ me right now?”

“Oh, kid,” Weasel shakes his head, sighing like he’s disappointed. “This isn’t blackmail. It’s _barely_ extortion. I’m offering you something you want in exchange for something I want, that’s just how business works.”

Peter wonders idly _what_ business Weasel is in but he figures asking questions like that are why Weasel suddenly had such a change of heart in the first place.

It’s an obvious play.

Actually, it’s _beyond_ obvious, Peter would have to be naive to accept it. Clearly something is going on here at this bar that Weasel doesn’t want Spider-Man to know about, but – well, if Peter wants to find out then wouldn’t staying close be the best way to do that?

Besides, Weasel could’ve just tried to shoot Peter instead of trying to bargain with him.

It means something that he didn’t.

It might just mean that Weasel isn’t _stupid_ but still that’s...that’s something, right?

“Okay,” Peter sighs and ignores how suspicious the obvious relief on Weasel’s face at his words is. “Okay, I will...never come here when you’re open and we’ll---be friends. Or something.”

Weasel grins at him, all teeth. “I’m sure it’ll be a blast.”

God, Peter is going to regret this _so much_ later.

He just knows it.


End file.
